Sports

Colorado national lab and industry team to turn grass into gasoline

By Mark JaffeThe Denver Post

Posted:
12/27/2012 04:36:50 PM MST

Updated:
12/28/2012 08:45:20 AM MST

Master technician James Page looks up through a grate Thursday at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, where the challenge of making biofuels has been researched for years. (Photos by RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post)

The goal is to turn a pine tree into a tank of gasoline, and it turns out it is just as difficult as it sounds.

Under the Cooperative Research and Development Agreement, NREL and Johnson Matthey are embarking on a five-year, $7 million project to perfect the chemistry and cut the price of turning trees, switchgrass or solid waste into fuel.

Making fuel from corn has been easier as the plant's combination of high sugars and cellulose makes it easy to turn it into alcohol, said David Robichaud, an NREL staff scientist.

Switch grass or fast-growing trees such as pines and poplars are a challenge because along with cellulose they contain lignin, Robichaud said.

In the pyrolysis process — which uses heat and pressure in the absence of oxygen — the lignin adds impurities, such as acids and water, to the fuel mix.

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The aim of the NREL-Johnson Matthey project is to find catalysts that will help break down the lignin into useful components.

Johnson Matthey is one of the world's largest makers of catalysts.

"The challenge is that catalysts are expensive, and the impurities tend to inactivate the catalyst. And that hurts the economics," said Ken Reardon, a chemical- and biological-engineering professor at Colorado State University, who is not involved in the project.

Page holds grass pellets that can be turned into biofuel at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Reardon's work focuses on using enzymes instead of heat and pressure to break down cellulose — but it, too, faces a problem with lignin.

"With either route, you are trying to deal with the economics and the environmental impacts," said Reardon, who is working with NREL on a separate project to find a naturally occurring enzyme to break down lignin.

The aim of the new project is to combine Johnson Matthey's catalysis expertise with NREL's biomass processing to "help accelerate the development of more economic routes to biofuels," Andrew Heavers, Johnson Matthey business-development director, said in a statement.

The cost of producing a gallon of fuel from the pyrolysis process will have to reach about $3 a gallon, according to NREL.

NREL will use each catalyst and report to Johnson Matthey the chemical constituents of the oil. The chemical company will then tweak the catalysts, trying to direct the chemical process in the right direction.

"It is a journey," Robichaud said. "It may be incremental, but we hope there will be a Eureka moment that will really drop the price."

The cooperative research-and-development agreement with Johnson Matthey is one of 184 active joint ventures NREL has with industry.

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